Remember the milkman who delivered your milk? Those rattling bottles arriving to your doorstep in the morning early before breakfast? And the way the birds would come and pick the foil tops off them?

Later the bottles became cartons and, although they could be difficult to open, they were better than the plastic bags of milk that were tested out on consumers some time back - these were the ones that used to freeze on cold days! The introduction of the current generation of screw caps on top of the carton was an improvement - they were easier to open but cause all sorts of recycling bin confusion, can-you-can't-you recycle these little green caps as well as the carton itself?

But nowadays: you have to go to the shop and pick up your own milk from the shop yourself - especially if you live in rural Castlebar.

We've all heard rumours that Amazon are trialling drone deliveries to customers. And in fact the first successfully recorded, actual commercial, delivery by a drone was just last week in the USA when a pharmacy flew an urgent prescription to a customer by drone.

Now it has been announced that SuperValu in Castlebar has stolen a march on the local Tesco, Dunnes, Aldi, Gavins and even Lidl by becoming the first regular supermarket in Ireland to introduce drone deliveries of groceries.

Unfortunately, milk is still a bit heavy for the current generation of drones that they are testing - so they won't be replacing the milkman just yet. But they will be delivering light products such as rice crispies, pop corn and dehydrated water. Later on, however, full-scale milk deliveries will be possible using the much heavier generation of drones that are on order - once they are commissioned.

In the meantime for your regular drone order - ordering itself is very simple - you just log on to their normal online shopping page and fill in your shopping list. You will be asked to tick a new 'Drone Delivery' box for the items that are most urgent for your drone delivery to your house.

Of course you will have to leave either your front door or your back door open (make sure you tick the correct box here) so that the drone can fly in and make the delivery. This means that there will be no danger of your groceries getting soaking wet while sitting in the rain just outside your house on the doorstep.

It's a no-brainer too that you will have to punch in your new eircode code - this is to make sure the drones can find your house. It's probably still on your fridge door.

Even more exciting advances are in the pipeline - with the iOT or 'internet Of Things' - this is where your fridge will communicate directly with the SuperValu drone and make sure that you never run out of anything.